Outrageous Excuses 2016

@Nero (Milo Yiannopoulos) is not a racist; Gays cannot be racist because racism = power + prejudice and gays do not have power to oppress. #FreeMilo (Matthew Anscher ‏@bumsense)

MP Naz Shah said anti-Semitic social media posts were down to "'ignorance". "I didn't get anti-Semitism as racism. I had never come across it. I think what I had was an ignorance." (politicshome.com)Racism
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race. (Free Dictionary)

Today's Sunday Times. Jeremy Hunt tried to get NHS segment taken out of Olympic opening ceremony as "worried people wouldnt get home on time". (david oliver ‏@mancunianmedic)

We were shopping around for a cheap mortgage and they happened to book it in the Channel Islands. (Andrea Leadsom on her tax affairs)

His ‘apology’ simply claimed we’d misunderstood him by reading his Actual Words. (Jonathan Healey on the Uni head who said the world didn’t need 21-year-old 6th century historians)

Due to Ghosts haunting our store we cannot use our computers or ovens. Please be patient as we wait.
"I once dug a little tunnel out into the road for the cameras. But that's it. Tunnelling is something that should be talked about without panicking." The metre-wide openings seen by the few people who have descended down the shaft in his back garden, he said, were shadows. (William Lyttle, the Hackney Mole Man)

The Croydon Mosque and Islamic Centre published on its website an article containing statements like “A woman should seek her husband’s permission when leaving the house.” Acting and modelling were described as “immoral”. The remarks have been removed after exposure by the Times, and a spokesman says: “The translations and interpretations provided may be too ‘literal’.”

It’s too late to stop the process of introducing the new contract for junior doctors, say those responsible a week before the deadline. Stop press: Jeremy Hunt has said there will be a five-day pause. May 7, 2016 (Doctors rejected it, Hunt imposed it anyway.)

Man snapped wearing a red wig, red nose and blackface said it was a face mask to treat his acne. (UKIP activist who “blacked up” was just using an acne treatment, UKIP says.)

A Paris tribunal has ruled that calling a male hairdresser a "faggot" is not homophobic - "because hair salons regularly employ gay people".

We can’t impose [insert reform here] because people aren’t ready for it yet. (In the 70s, equal pay was phased in to avoid hurting peoples’ feelings – or something.)

You don’t understand French humour. (On what looks very like racism in Charlie Hebdo etc.)

When one Madrid politician was asked who put €1m cash in his loft, he suggested "plumbers or men from Ikea". (Feargus O'Sullivan ‏@FeargusOSull)

I wrote down these figures that look like hours worked and money paid in my diary because I have OCD and an obsession with numbers. (Nothing to Declare She kept sinking her head in her hands and sighing “How can I explain?” Her first explanation was: “I’m trying to give up smoking and this is the number of cigarettes I smoked in a day and what they cost.”)

It reminds me of the notorious excuse offered in the 1980s by my Cambridge college for not admitting female students: that the cost of installing full-length mirrors was prohibitive. (Richard Morrison, Times March 2016 on choirgirls in the CoE)

There’s a mosque in Soho that won’t admit women because it doesn’t have a ladies toilet.

My canary planted the cannabis, officer.

Just got the best excuse for an unpaid invoice ever: floods in India have interrupted outsourced accounts dept. (For 9 months). (@RowanMoore)

Man who bludgeoned his wife to death says she came at him with a knife and then hit herself on the head with a mallet. (2016-01-14)My past racist remarks were “badly worded”, says Oliver Letwin.

A former banking lawyer who entered a woman’s bedroom wearing fishnet stockings and a purple G-string told a court he thought she was a giant panda. (Dec 2015)